A Daughter's Demise
by Lone Wolf8
Summary: In the criminal justice system the people are represented by Heroes, Police, and the District Attorneys of their cities. Sarah Evans is the up and coming assistant DA of Paragon City, but how will she fair in a city of Heroes... and Villains?


- - -  
**8:04 p.m. September 13th 2005**  
- - -  
"You sure this is all of it?" The blonde asked while peering at the documents over her square framed glasses.

"Everything we could find, sorry Evans, not a lot to go on I know." Detective Dawson replied. "Seems she's always got someone covering up the accidents." 

"Not this time… We're taking her down this time." The assistant district attorney replied as she set the papers down on her desk. "I won't let her slip through again."

"So should I swing by here with some coffee from Starbucks at 2 in the mornin'?" Detective Dawson asked with a smirk. 

"Actually that would be lovely." She answered with a playful smile.

What a smile she had, everyone loved that smile. Her parents, her dentist, the papers. Sarah Evans had the kind of charisma presidential candidates spent years trying to learn. She was a star sky-rocketing up the legal latter. District Attorney Jeremy Laughlin would be retiring next year and there wasn't a doubt in the minds of anyone in the office that Evans would be the one to fill his shoes. She was one of the best DAs Paragon had in years, but there was one target she could never hit, one crook who always got away clean.

"You're not getting away with it this time Crey…" Sarah murmured under her breath as Dawson walked out of her office.

This was the third report in a week. The witnesses all reported the same thing, men in Crey jumpsuits dumping barrels into the Talos Bay on an island a little ways out to sea, but this! This was the best yet! An anonymous tip letter, it had everything, the type of waste being dumped, the times when they did the dumping, early hours when few heroes and even fewer cops were on patrol to catch them in the act. It couldn't have been easier if the Countess had walked in and turned herself over to them. 

"Three O' clock…" She mused to herself as she looked over the letter atop the witness reports and other documentation.

If Sarah had a fault it was that she pushed the envelope too far. She'd have made an even better investigative journalist than she would an attorney.

- - -  
**2:56 a.m. September 14th 2005**  
- - -

A clang jarred Sarah from her sleep. She had dozed off as she waited for them, hidden in the craggy rocks. She quietly reached for her digital camera, flicking on the night lense, and zooming in on the group of men who were pulling metal barrels from what looked to be a hidden storage bay. The metal door had been covered by layers of sand when she'd reached the tiny island by a motor raft earlier that evening. To the naked eye the door had been completely invisible unless of course, like these men, you knew where to look. She set the camera down on top of a rock in front of her, letting it record the men as they grunted and grumbled about how heavy the barrels were. Sarah snatched up a small note pad, scribbling hastily in the dim light cast by the moon over head. Struggling to keep herself hunkered down behind the rocks to make sure she wasn't spotted as she wrote upon the paper.

_Likely the dumping is a two step process.  
A first group probably brings out the barrels earlier in the week.  
Barrels are hidden in a storage tank that looks like it was built and then buried under the sand.  
Crey may have been dumping here for years._  
_  
_Sarah set the pen and paper down and peered back over the rocks as the men heaved the barrels towards a motor boat waiting just a little ways off shore. She knew next they'd load the barrels up and then they'd pull out away from the island and dump them into the water. How long had they been polluting a place where people swam and played? How long had they been exposing people to who knows what contaminants dumping that garbage into the bay? She gritted her teeth as she watched them, times like this made her wish she was a hero, able to rush in and smack them around for doing this. Unfortunately, she was no hero, and when she heard the click of a gun's safety switch and felt a cold metal barrel against her head all she felt was fear welling into a lump in her throat.

- - -  
**4:25 p.m. September 15th 2005**  
- - - 

It had been over 24 hours since anyone had seen Sarah Evans. Jeremy Laughlin found the Assistant DA's office ransacked on the morning of September 14th, and the evidence from all four of her most recent cases had been stolen. This coincided with a meta-human break in at the police evidence lockers in the King's Row station. All evidence, witness reports, back up files and field details had been stolen. Someone wanted to put a stop to a case Sarah was working on and they put a stop to three others just to make sure there was no way to pinpoint who was responsible. A few people knew who it was, but there was no way to prove it, not without that letter. The only concern now was finding Sarah Evans.

Detective Floyd Dawson knew in his gut they wouldn't find her. Not in time to save her at least. He'd seen it before, many times, too many times with Crey. 

"I never should've left her alone… I should've stayed or had someone keeping an eye on her office, something!" He growled, pounding his fist on his desk.

"This wasn't your fault, Dawson. She knew what she was getting in to, she just never knew how to avoid going in head first." Laughlin replied, frowning deeply; he didn't want to admit it but he too knew that Sarah was as good as dead.

- - -  
**9:01 p.m. September 17th 2005**  
- - -

"Tragic news tonight, Paragon City assistant district attorney Sarah Evans was found on the Talos Beach, just below Spanky's Boardwalk earlier today. Miss Evans, known best for her case putting the OutCast gang leader FrostFire in prison, had suffered severe radiation poisoning and third degree burns across most of her body. She was rushed to the Talos Emergency Trauma Ward but doctors were unable to do anything to help the young woman. Evans died at 7:22 this evening." Anchorwoman Tracy Reinbauk reported at the start of the News at Nine. 

As Travis and Maria Evans sat at home watching the news broadcast with tear filled eyes. Mrs. Evans had just gotten off the phone with their older daughter Jordan who'd had to hang up when the report started. The elderly mother's heart ache was momentarily distracted by a knock at their door. Maria went to answer it and called for her husband. Flanked by two black suited body guards, Countess Crey stood on the Evans' front porch.

"Mister and Misses Evans, I'm very sorry for your loss,' the Countess began, giving them a sympathetic look, 'I understand Sarah was looking into reports that men in my company were illegally dumping toxic material into the Talos bay. I can't help but feel partially responsible for her death considering the circumstances; assuming you have no objections, I hope you'll allow me to cover Sarah's hospital and funeral bills." The Countess said with a voice smooth as wine. 

Twenty minutes later the city's richest woman was back in her limousine on the way to her lavish penthouse, knowing there wasn't single thread left for the police to tug on now. The tracks were covered yet again. No one ever got the best of her, certainly not some upstart blonde in the District Attorney's office; it was such a pleasure finally getting rid of that loathsome thorn in her side.

There would not actually be a funeral for Sarah Evans. At that moment across town at Galaxy City Morgue an autopsy was about to begin. Doctor Frank Morrison and his assistant Ramira Baulmer were just about to begin cutting open the body, clad in radiation suits and in a clean room to prevent any leaks into the rest of the Morgue due to the clinging poisonous material in Sarah's system.

"My god… Look at her…" Ramira stammered, her face pale at the sight of Sarah's body.

They saw a lot of disturbing things doing their jobs but this... This was horrific on a Hollywood level. Sarah's flesh was tinted a sickly green hue, parts of it were burned and blistered. Her face had been so badly burned that her skin was grafted directly to her skull, charred black with streaked spiraling lines of neon green where the radioactive materials had burned straight through her veins giving her skill a hideous black and green tattooed appearance. Her pretty blonde hair was now a pale sickly yellow and her eyes had melted from the intense heat, leaving only vacant sockets. Her pretty smile was all that was left. Her lips had been burnt away, leaving her skull with a permanent grin that sent chills down the spine.

"Let's just get this over with. This girl's been through enough." Morrison replied, looking pityingly at the corpse as he lowered the scalpel towards her abdomen.

There are many things that make a human scream in fear. Many things can cause a shock induced heart attack. Some things can even turn your hair white from fright. But when Sarah Evans' left hand shot out and grabbed Frank Morrison's wrist he did not do any of these. His eyes went wide and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He stared in stunned silence as Sarah's grinning jaws opened wide and she unleashed a horrible ear splitting scream of anguish and confusion.

The two doctors stumbled in pain. Morrison wrenched his hand from Sarah's grip as he clutched at his ears. Ramira Baulmer fell to her knees sobbing as she felt the warmth of blood spilling from her ears before she passed out. Morrison did not have the luxury of fainting, he fell to his side, watching in confusion and fear as the corpse of Sarah Evan's rose up off the table, and then shimmered like a hologram, phasing into a non-corporeal state before she vanished straight through the wall.

As he lay on the floor still clutching his ears in pain he was struck by the thought that no one would be able to believe, even in a city as bizarre as Paragon, that a dead woman rose up off the table and then simply seemed to shift from a corpse, to a spirit entity in the blink of an eye.

- - -  
**7:42 p.m. October 31st, 2005**  
- - -

It took Sarah over a week just to remember a few bits and pieces of her memory. It took even longer to figure out where she was. She'd forgotten so much, she couldn't even find her way around the city, though she knew she should have been able to, she remembered it had once been her home. She recognized certain things. She found instinctively that she was able to keep herself from being seen by living things. She could move through solid objects with ease and defy gravity completely. It was such a feeling of freedom, it was one of the few firm feelings she could actually identify with, freedom. She felt detached from everything, even emotion itself.

Finally though, she'd found her way to the place she'd so desperately wanted to reach. Today was her birthday, today was Halloween, and she'd come home to see her parents. She was so excited, so overjoyed! What a treat this would be for her mom and dad! There little girl had come home to see them. She couldn't help how she looked, she didn't even realize how ghastly her appearance was. Her death-rattled brain didn't make that connection. She struggled just to make herself solid so that they'd be able to see her, then she rang the door-bell with a big beautiful smile on her face. 

"Mom! It's me, Sarah!" She cried joyously as Maria Evans opened the door.

"TRAVIS!" the elderly woman screamed in fright, scrambling away from the door, throwing the basket of Halloween candy at the grisly specter standing before her. 

"Mom? Wait! Mom, it's me! It's Sarah, your daughter!" She cried, running after her, reaching a bony, clawed hand out trying to catch her mother's arm. "Mother it's me! It's me!"

Travis Evans came charging out of the den wielding an old service revolver from his police days. "You get away from my wife you monster!" He roared, firing two rounds into the creature's body.

Sarah recoiled, feeling the bullets bury themselves inside her, she didn't even find it odd that it didn't hurt. She'd been shot, but it didn't hurt. The man who shot her… Her father, her father had just shot her, twice, one shot had gone straight through her now unbeating heart.

"Daddy…?" She stammered in stunned confusion.

The last shreds of humanity were torn away in a terrible scream of pain, confusion and torment. Her voice rang out like a thunderous blast, a vase on the living room table shattered. Picture frames of Sarah, her sister Jordan, and their parents at Christmas that hung on the hallway walls cracked. Windows trembled and then broke apart into millions of shards as Sarah's solid body shifted non-corporeal once more, the metal slugs from Travis' gun fell through her as she shot straight up through the ceiling, racing into the Halloween sky screaming for the entire city to hear.

On this Halloween night a giant pumpkin king rose from the shadows of another realm and roamed the streets of Paragon, stopped only by the heroic efforts of the cities heroes. On this night witches and vampires sprang from the dark, preying upon the unsuspecting rookie heroes and heroines. And on this night, a scared young woman who didn't know how to move on from a life cut short by the ill deeds of others lost the last shreds of her humanity and her sanity.

There would be no light to move into for Sarah Evans, there would be no final rest. She, like many before her, had died a horrendous death far too soon for her young life. Her pain, her anger, her confusion, they bound her spirit forever to this world. No longer a promising young district attorney, but a terrible visage of evil and insanity.

The Grinning Banshee. A loathsome creature that would grow to strike fear into the hearts of all she met, her stammered non-sense, her vicious lust for violence, her cannibalistic nature and her complete disregard for human well being would make it nearly impossible to believe this was the same woman who fought for law and order in a city of heroes.

If they could see her on future Halloween nights, after her mindless frenzy slaughtering any innocent trick-or-treater she met with gruesome and wicked glee and bone chilling laughter. If they saw her ravage and cannibalize happy parents handing candy out at their homes to avenge her own cruel fate, to try and lighten the pain forced upon her by the rejection of her own parents on that Halloween night. If they could see that gruesome thing huddled in some dark corner of an alleyway in a City of Villains, if they could hear her mournful wails or forlorn sobs, listen to her call for her mother and father and wonder why they hadn't sent her a Birthday card this year. Perhaps there, there they might find Sarah Evans, the promising young woman whose life would never reach the destiny it was meant for.


End file.
